He had to see her. He hadn't been able to stop thinking about her all day. Even throughout the very important meeting he was currently sat in he hadn't stopped thinking about her. Fenrys willed his wandering thoughts of Mia to go away and tried to focus on what was being studied the surface of the large oval table he was seated at, noting the chips and dents from years of use. Somehow this, combined with thoughts of Mia, was more interesting than discussing trade deals with Terrasens allying countries.

Sat next to him was Lorcan who was bouncing his legs up and down underneath the table, clearly as bored as Fenrys. Fenrys looked up and watched his queen, Aelin conversing with a lord from Wendlyn. At least she had her shit together and wasn't dying of boredom.

Looking at Aelin promptly reminded him of her daughter and so his thoughts crept back to Mia. She was probably in the healer's quarters right now, either caring for her patients or creating tonics and balms. She was probably wearing that tunic that fit her so well, the one that Fenrys really, really liked and had thought about taking off too many times.

Suddenly the room filled with silence and when Fenrys looked up everyone was looking at him, obviously waiting for a reply to a question he hadn't even heard. Fuck. Fuck. He looked to Aelin who was glaring at him slightly, clearly she had sussed that he hadn't been listening. He was going to be in shit later.

Before he could come up with an excuse, Aelin said, "As Fenrys can't be bothered to listen and the rest of you look bored shitless lets end this here. Thank you for your time everyone, you're all dismissed." The visiting lords got up from their seats and thanked Aelin individually before leaving. Fenrys stayed sat in his chair, trying to catch Aelin's eye to silently apologise. She was annoyed with him and she wasn't going to look at him, he realised.

She stood from her chair and turned to Rowan who put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. "See you all at dinner later." She said. They left the room without saying anything more and everyone who was still seated at the table started to get up and leave. Suddenly Fenrys couldn't wait to get out of the room. He felt humiliated. He had let Aelin down and he wished that he had been paying more attention to the conversation.

He left the room and walked down the long corridor heading for the training room. The more he thought about Aelin snubbing him, the angrier he got. He thought about one of the lords from Adarlan, Marius, and the way he had smirked at Fenrys when the meeting had been cancelled. He needed to punch something and he needed to punch something now. He hadn't even made it halfway to the training room when he turned to face the nearest wall and punched it so hard that the wall exploded and chunks of bricks rained down onto his feet. Fenrys stared at hole in the wall. Great, Aelin was going to be even more annoyed with him now. He felt a lot better now that he had realised his anger, until his hand started to throb and swell. He looked down and examined his now throbbing hand and thought he knew just the person to heal him.

Fenrys knew he was coming up to the healers quarters when he could smell the fresh, floral scent of the herbs and spices that grew almost everywhere in this part of the castle. He reached the large doorway and discovered that the normally open door was shut. He thought it was odd that the doors were closed, but instead of knocking and waiting like he knew he should, he grabbed the worn handles and pushed the door open. As the door opened and Fenrys stepped over the threshold, he scanned the room, as he always did, constantly checking for threats. The first thing he noticed was that it was dead. Literally dead. The quarters were empty, with one exception. Mia sat at the very back of the room in the left corner at a small, shabby table. She hadn't noticed him come in, too preoccupied with her work to look up. As Fenrys got closer he could see that she was weighing ingredients and furiously scribbling in a notebook. Maybe she was trying to create a new tonic. He was nearly at the desk when she looked up, her face full of surprise. The look of surprise turned into a frown and Fenrys couldn't hide his disappointment. Had he annoyed her by showing up unannounced? She had looked busy, but he was injured, so he had a valid reason to be here he told himself.

"What is it today?" she said with a roll of her eyes. "Banged your head? Grazed a knee?" The corners of her mouth twitched up as she spoke and Fenrys realised she was playing with him. Relief swept through him, he didn't want to piss off two Ashryver women in one day.

"I was sparring with Connall and he caught my hand. I think it might be broken." A blatant lie and they both knew it.

"You could easily fix that with your own magic." Mia looked unimpressed.

"I know but I wanted a professional to do it, is Gwen about? In fact, is anybody around?" Fenrys asked.

Mia rolled her eyes and fought a laugh. Gwen was the most senior healer in the castle and whilst she was the best healer, she was also absolutely ancient and hard of hearing. Mia tried even harder to suppress a laugh as she remembered when Gwen had smacked Fenrys on the back of his head for being rude.

"It's just me I'm afraid, do you want to wait for Gwen? She's out the back having a nap."

"You'll have to do then if my favourite healer isn't around." Fenrys said with fake exasperation.

He took a seat on the edge of the nearest bed without being told to and grinned lazily at Mia. He knew exactly what he did to her when he looked at her like that, which is why, Mia suspected, he did it so often.

She grabbed a tonic for pain and sat it down on a table next to the bed. She knew he didn't need it, but they had to keep up appearances if they didn't want to be interrupted. She also secretly enjoyed caring for him, but she would never admit that out loud.

Mia stood in front of Fenrys and he opened his legs so that she could get closer to him. She stepped forward and kept her face down, trying not to react to Fenrys' brazenness. They were playing a very dangerous game and Mia knew that, yet she couldn't help herself when it came to Fenrys.

"Can I see your hand please?" she asked.

Fenrys held out his hand and Mia took it in her left hand, gently covering it with her right hand. His hands were huge compared to hers. Where hers were soft and unscarred, his were rough and calloused, covered in scars. Warriors hands. She liked the way they felt underneath her own; they were steady. Trustworthy.

She focused her magic on healing Fenrys' hand. He had tripped supposedly. It looked more like he had punched something due to the gashes on the knuckles, but Mia refrained from commenting. She liked having him here as much as he liked coming and she didn't want to ruin their routine. Her hands began to glow. Small, blue glimmers of light emitted from her grip, searching for where they needed to go. They found Fenrys' knuckles and started to knit the skin back together. She looked up at him and found him already looking at her. She smiled and looked back down at their joined hands and continued her work. When his hand was healed, she passed him the tonic.

"Drink that now please." She said.

The tonic was a grey colour, its consistency thick. Fenrys took one look at it and made a face which caused her to snort.

"What, you can't drink it? You're supposed to be a warrior Fenrys." Mia teased.

"Hey, I am a warrior, and I will drink it but that doesn't mean I have to enjoy it."

He screwed up his face and then drank the tonic in one go. He passed the empty cup back to Mia who was watching him with concern in her eyes.

"Are you going to tell me what you really did to your hand? There's no way you did that sparring." She said. She leant forward as if to reach for him. "You're too good a warrior remember?" She pulled back as Fenrys leaned forward. She could see the glint in his eyes and knew that he was enjoying this as much as she was.

The glint in his eyes died out as he seemed to remember what caused the injury.

"I was in a meeting discussing trade deals with all the lords from our allying countries. Your mother was leading it of course but it was so boring. I stopped listening after about half an hour." Fenrys said.

Mia smiled to herself. That didn't surprise her at all. This was Fenrys she was talking to. She let him carry on.

"Somebody asked me a question but I was zoned out. They were all just sat there looking at me, waiting for me to answer and I had no fucking clue what they had been talking about. I felt like such a prick, the way Aelin was looking at me, like I had let her down…" He trailed off.

Mia knew what this was about. Fenrys had always absolutely adored her mother, always wanting to impress her, serve her. He did all those things and more, but he was hard on himself when he made mistakes. She knew Fenrys like the back of her hand, knew that he would have been annoyed with himself. She also knew her mother and that she would never purposely make Fenrys feel side-lined. Yes, maybe she was annoyed but she would come around eventually. She told Fenrys this as she sat down on the bed next to him.

He looked at her and gave a small, sad smile. "You're right. You're always right, you have a habit of that you know?"

"I know." She said, grinning. "You still haven't told me how you actually injured your hand. You didn't punch anyone did you?"

Fenrys grimaced. "No I didn't punch anyone, on the way to the training room I got so angry I punched a wall."

"You punched a wall? Fenrys, really? Gods, what am I going to do with you?" She rested her head on his shoulder and laughed. "I can't believe you did that, mum's going to kill you."

"I know which is why I have to go and fix it, before she chops my head off. If she did that do you reckon she would put it on a spike as a warning to others?" he joked.

"Shut up and get out of here you idiot." She laughed as she jumped down from the bed.

"Some healer you are, slinging out your patients the moment they're healed. What about my recovery?" Fenrys whined. Mia turned and started to push him off and away from the bed. "Alright, alright, I'm going. Thank you for fixing me up, princess." He smiled. He brought her head closer to his with his newly healed hand and kissed her forehead gently. It was both a goodbye and a thank you in one. "See you at dinner." He whispered.

"See you at dinner." Mia whispered back. She watched as he turned away from her and practically swaggered out of the quarters. She couldn't hide her disappointment when he didn't look back. If the butterflies in her stomach were anything to go by, she was in big trouble.